Beowulf in a Box (fwd)

[Jukka E Isosaari]

On Mon, 28 Sep 1998, Kragen wrote:

> Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 10:49:54 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Douglas Eadline <deadline@plogic.com>
> To: Kragen <kragen@dnaco.net>
> Cc: beowulf@cesdis1.gsfc.nasa.gov
> Subject: Re: Beowulf in a Box
> 
> On Sat, 26 Sep 1998, Kragen wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 26 Sep 1998, Kragen wrote:
> > > http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/sa-beowulf/
> --snip--
> > 
> > I'm interested to hear other people's comments.  William Rankin
> > commented that such things have never gone anywhere, and I'm curious to
> > find out why.
> 
> While I encourage such efforts, I have my reservations as to
> the economic success of such an approach.  Let me explain a bit.
> Please consider me the "devils advocate" so that I can make your idea
> stronger by providing my reservations based on my experience.
...
> Contrast this with a complete commodity solution - where
> an component has more than 1 source and is guaranteed to
> to track new technology.  A growing base of software support
> is available.  Systems can be-recycled. etc.
> 
> There is a large amount of comfort knowing that you are not
> relying on a single person, company, or product to run your machine.  
...
> To say Intel is behind ARM helps a bit, but not much. Intel
> killed their own children(i860/960) and closed their 
> supercomputer shop (except for custom machines).  

Forgive my ignorance, and e-mailing both lists, but has anyone 
talked to Intel people about Beowulf projects? It would seem to
me that they should have an interest in sponsoring this kind of
super-computer development, given that most of them would probably 
use Intel processors.

They should have plenty of experience, and maybe could come up with
a cheap NC-design that could be used as a Beowulf node as well?

And maybe someone could try and talk to folks at IBM about sponsoring
and development help? They should be knowledgeable about both NCs and
supercomputers.

++ J